Barbarian King

by Frank B. Thompson III

odd-looking at best, tiptoeing daintily with his colossal appendages outstretched, having to pause at the slightest irregularity in footing, so as not to stumble. This is not to say that IllaryHay did not look, or sound similarly odd; in fact, she did look a bit freakish with those trotters of hers looking like oversized clown shoes and the ‘klopp klopp klopp’ of her not so slight bun....they both looked like they belonged in a circus freak show.

  "Say, you tromp around more like a girl than a man now," she remarked, spying his unseemly gait and in a mocking, laughing tone she let him know, "You must be really pissed to get stuck with those same skinny legs of yours.”

  “The Gods have not been entirely agreeable to you either wench. You really haven’t seen just what you look like, have you?”

  “So, tell me, what’s wrong with the way I look? I thought you said I looked ‘hot.’”

  He stared fixedly at the woman, as she lumbered by his side, then cast her a look full of obscene mockery. “Well, not really a lot has changed from your waste up. Your arms are a little longer, you’ve got hair growing everywhere, but other than that I’d say you are pretty terrific looking.”

  “So, what’s wrong with me?”

  “Okay, from the waist down you’re about as bottom heavy as...as...well I’m not sure what you’re as big as.”

  “You just wished you had legs like mine. I just think you’re jealous,” she smirked in reply.

  “Screw it...okay, I agree. I would like to have some different legs, but I have plans. I’m going to do squats every morning and once I get this balance thing under control, I plan to run everywhere...too.”

  The President unexpectedly got one of his cleated shoes caught on some vines and took a catastrophic spill into a huge, nearby tree...head first!

  Clunk!

  For the damsel it was like seeing Curly in the Three Stooges catch a hammer to the head.

  Bong!

  She began to laugh uncontrollably, Bwah-ha-ha-ha!

  Rubbing his flat noggin...Bwah-ha-ha-ha!...he carefully rose to his feet.

  BamaOay was not in a humorous mood, nobody ever laughed at him! Problem was here in this place there was no Internal Revenue Service, no Department of Justice, no Environmental Protection Agency, no unions, no unemployed rioters to sic on that laughing hyena. Here none of his usual threats, name calling, temper tantrums, yelling at the top of his lungs would have the same...if any affect at all. She could, after all, answer his howling by calling upon her new ear-piercing, siren-like squealing that would cause him to go mad. No, he needed to respond by thinking of a solution. He recognized that this tripping thing was going to be a common theme if he kept trampling around the woods in his up until now, not very useful, spiked golf shoes. Suddenly, the slow glimmer of a memory seeped into his cranium, a voice that communicated to him saying, “Didn’t I uncover a paved road somewhere around here?”

  That’s right! He had seen a lava road...a yellow, lava road to be exact, but where? He glanced about his surroundings. “Oh yeah, it is just over there.”

  “What?” responded his sidekick.

  “There’s a paved road just over there,” he replied, pointing off to the right.

  “A road? In this place? That seems impossible.”

  “No, I’m sure I remember walking upon a stone road. Come on, let us take it instead of tromping around in this inhospitable undergrowth. It heads in the same general direction as the fruit bushes.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  Within a short time the two were strolling gayly together toward the apple orchard, the President’s cleated shoes creating sparks on the hard roadbed; IllaryHay’s huge feet causing her to stumble as she made every effort to contend with the difficulties of their monstrous size. The sun shone bright and the flying feather things sang sweetly. The two travelers did not feel nearly as bad as you might suppose a couple of cosmopolitans would who had been suddenly whisked away from civilization and set down in the midst of a weird, new world.

  Reaching the spot the President strode gingerly over to one of the nearby fruit ladened shrubs, arms extended out to his sides and followed closely by the shuffling IllaryHay. BamaOay next grabbed one of the poor little bushes baring a few apples and unrooted the poor, tiny plant in one slight tug.

  “You imbecile!” she exclaimed. “Why did you kill that bush? We could have easily plucked off the fruit by hand.”

  “Lighten up IllaryHay, I can’t help if I don’t yet know my own strength.”

  “God, you really are a barbarian aren’t you?”

  “I never said I wasn’t,” came his reply. He removed the stem and peeled off the tough leaves of one of the fruity things before handing it to the IllaryHay. "Sink your teeth in this juicy looking thing.”

  He now plucked one of his own apple-things off the bush, examined it briefly for bugs, then took a quick look over at the IllaryHay to see if she had been gullible enough to bite into the thing first.

  Oh hell, he thought, seeing she wasn’t going for the bait, I suppose starving would be worse.

  “Okay, let’s hope for the best, so here goes.”

  Stuffing the apple into his mouth without a second thought, he sounded like a munching horse with his heavy jaws and molars.

  Chomp...chomp...

  Seeing no adverse reaction IllaryHay then stuffed the fruit into her face.

  “Om nom nom, good...” she mumbled, mouth crammed full.

  “Gosh almighty, these things are delightful,” he beamed, after biting into another and half-chewing it, then swallowing seeds and all. Juice trickled from the President’s mouth as he munched away, licking his lips involuntarily, spitting out the occasional pit.

  The bottle blonde smiled, her mouth packed tightly with the tasty delights, managed to spittle, “I know, right.”

  BamaOay ripped from the ground another bush, as he continued chewing. “This thing tastes really good.”

  IllaryHay unexpectedly belched with a grimace.

  Burrrrrrp!

  BamaOay now suddenly burped, too.

  Burrrrrrp!

  “Say, are you starting to feel a little tipsy...in the head?” she asked, wobbling.

  “I must admit I am starting to feel a little numb,” responded the President, finding it difficult to maintain his steadiness, even with arms outstretched.

  “You don’t think these things are poisoning us, do you?” she asked, also with a growing, shit-eating smile.

  She took a closer look at the apple-things, then noticed something peculiar. “Say, these aren’t apples, after all.”

  “What? Sure they are,” he replied, smiling stupidly.

  “Look, they all have something resembling a raie des fesses running down one side.”

  “Raie des...what?”

  “Tee...hee...hee,” she giggled. “Raie des fesses is French for ‘butt crack.’”

  BamaOay slobbered a reply, “Say, now that you mention it does look like an ass crack. You know you might be right. I think I’ll have one more;” he paused, a befuddled look appearing as he struggled with the sleepiness of expression, "or, maybe not."

  “I know, we’ll call them raie des fesses,” laughed the big-footed debutante. “What do you think?”

  “Ha! Sounds perfect,” BamaOay replied, his mouth now becoming parched, thirst now set about to assail the President savagely. He needed a drink. “Say, I’m getting real thirsty?” he announced, with a shit-eating grin that stretched from ear to ear.

  “God, I would prostitute my mother for something to drink,” she garbled, seesawing as she stepped evermore uncontrollably...eyes glazed. Comprehension was now dropping fast for both.

  “There’s a river this way...” he slurred, with a wave of his hand. Stumbling zig zagging, “Come on...I’ll lead the...”

  IllaryHay’s mouth sputtered, “God almighty, I feel superb,” as she strolled wobbly at his side, before stumbling and collapsing to terra firma unceremoniously.
r />   Ba-dOnk!

  She attempted to stand for an instant, reeled on buckling knees and then fell in a sodden heap to the ground. “I wouldn’t have believed this possible, this can’t be a....I am so sleepy.”

  BamaOay, for his part, stumbled and took a headlong fall into a boulder, his head rebounding off the rock and knocking him out cold.

  "You are so strong," she whispered, while fading, her voice waning. "Love me...love me you green brute..." The sleepy murmur faded away; her dusky eyes closed, the long lashes drooping over her fuzzy cheeks, her huge physique relaxed.

  The din of burdensome breathing descended upon the serene scene, that and heavy, bestial snorting.

  Zzzz...zzzz...snort!

  The Prophesy

  The Chicago Post-Chronicle-Tribune-Times - It has recently been discovered that President BamaOay has also gone missing; so the Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA and a dozen other government departments and agencies have expanded their search to include him in their investigations surrounding the disappearance of Presidential Candidate IllaryHay Clinton. The former President remains the primary suspect in the disappearance of, now both the President and his wife.

  As the President lay unconscious he dreamed. He dreamed a swirling grey mist had descended upon him, and a curious almost human-like voice, faint and faraway, incomprehensible and yet seemingly not within his power to ignore it. Large headed driver in hand the President was like a sleepwalker in the haze and the sound grew more distinct as he pressed on until he understood the word being recited...it was his own name that was being called across the gulfs of nothingness.

  Hypnotically he gazed into the depths of murkiness and at a growing darkness where he thought he could make out a large, dim shadow beginning to take shape. BamaOay glared at the thing unspeaking, feeling a chill overcome him. Voodoo and witchdoctors abounded in his past and any fool could tell that this place had the appearances of being a spooky scene. He sensed an inexplicable sensation about him that set him apart...a foreign suspicion that both Time and Space had been altered...a sense of tremendous and sinister antiquity. It was almost too much for even his ferocious spirit and he became afraid.

  The voice continued calling, as the mist now began to clear, the light growing brighter in his mind’s eye. He found himself standing in the presence of a great entryway cut into a solid enclosure of stone. It was dark and unlighted, but by some magic he could see as if it were day. He entered the chamber to find the floor, ceiling and walls were of marble like in the White House and covered with portraits of himself. It looked as if every kind of artist had taken a crack at putting his mug on canvas. He saw several oil paintings, some charcoal drawings and a dozen, or so murals. There were even full-size figurines of him carved in marble, all in striking poses: Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker, something resembling Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement, and many ancient heroes and half-forgotten demigods. He shuddered to see the vast shadowy outlines of mythological monsters and he recognized that someone, or something had lived to see those unsightly figures of a long ago past.

  He came upon a wide stair carved in the solid rock and the sides of the shaft were adorned with the signs of the Zodiac, so large and clear cut that he got goose bumps. The steps were carved each with historic figures of past communists, so that at each step he planted his heel on the head of a different demigod, as it was intended from the time this edifice was first erected. He was quite at ease with these common university-like surroundings.

  The voice persisted in summoning him onward and at last, in a twilight that would have been impenetrable to his terrestrial eyes, he came upon a strange crypt and saw a vague white hair, be-speckled man with pointy, dunce cap sitting on a tomb. His hair rose up and his grip tightened about the shaft of his golf club, as the figure spoke in sepulchral tones.

  "Do you recognize me, BamaOay?"

  "No, should I?"

  "It is I," said the ancient, "Saul.”

  With a stifled whimper the President shrank back, the pupils of his eyes growing wide, his nerves quivering at the name. “Saul?”

  “Yes, you dolt, it is I...your teacher and mentor: Saul Alinskyway!"

  Suddenly tears welled into the President’s eyes, stuttering in bewilderment, "Oh, teacher, is it really you! But, you have been dead for decades?"

  "Harken!" spoke the other commandingly. "As a pebble tossed into a lake sends ripples to the further shores, happenings in the Unseen World have broken like waves on my slumber. For you the stamp of mighty happenings and great deeds is still to come. But, your bumblings have let loose a tide of cynics upon the real world, against which our allies in the media are starting to have little effect."

  "You speak in riddles," said BamaOay, uneasily.

  “Listen to me BamaOay, you are here because you’re screwing everything up back in the other world. You need some practice on leadership which is why you and I are talking. Ultimately you will be able to loose your barbarian fury again, and effectively against those who would stop all the wonderful ‘hope and change’ you have dumped upon our mindless subjects. You must kill our sworn enemy, those conservatives with round heads and no sun visors.”

  “No sun visors?”

  “Yes, no unibrow like you, or I possess.”

  “I have a unibrow?”

  “Yes, you idiot! It is a sign of our intelligence.”

  “Holy shit, what have I gotten myself into?”

  “Shut up you fool! Oh, and don’t take any prisoners; all must be eliminated.”

  “Well, that’s at least one positive thing to come out of this conversation.”

  The wizard spoke in a hushed whisper, “Listen closely to me BamaOay, there are dark rumblings barely guessed of by you abuzz in untapped powwowing. Those fiends of ours are drawing up plans that might take away and rend apart all the social dreams we hope to impart upon the masses. There is a fox in the henhouse BamaOay...a fox in the kingdom come up from who recalls where with much greater wisdom of economics and the ability to make us look more dense and stupid in the eyes of the commoners. As a sleeping rooster dreams of the fox that crawls near it I too have felt the foul presence of these creatures in this world. They are becoming drunk with power and the blows they strike the very core of our beliefs and may well bring down all that we have striven to create. I have also called you to me to give you something, a mark for you royal scepter to help you recruit like-minded barbarians."

  "But, why?" the President bewilderedly asked, "Some say our sides half-thought-out theories no longer hold water. Even our news media making up lies every other story no longer moves our dumbed-downed constituents. I have done all that I can to fundamentally change the country, but my voice seems now to be carried on unseen wings going in one ear and out the other of most Democrats; besides, I am soon to be an outsider replaced by someone else far less good looking upon my retirement as President."

  "Stop your mumblings you clod!" His ghostly tones reverberated through the great shadowy cavern. "Your destiny begins here again in this dimension of shadows, fellow primitives and wild beasts. Defeat our sworn enemy here in this world and I will make sure history has you standing along our other hallowed heroes, exalted leftists who are sharing similar fates as my own. Communists like Marx, Stalin, and the other guy...who I cannot remember his name right now. I think the guy was a Chinese, whoever he his was. Anyhow, a gigantic syzygy is now forming in the skies above us and the womb of Fate is fast falling upon us. You must create and dump more of that ‘hope and change’ bullshit of yours upon an even more ignorant group of lowbrows; I, therefore, dub thee ‘the Barbarian King,’ the one and only primordial being who has been preordained to reach new heights of extraordinary, righteous destiny.”

  What returned to the wizard was dumbfounded silence.

  “So, how does that sound BamaOay?”

  “Well, I suppose it sounds okay Saul, but how will I know what to do, or say? There aren’t any teleprompters a
round from what I have seen.”

  “Hush you numbskull! Don’t speak so loud, otherwise you will give away the secret sauce!”

  The wizard paused to contemplate the BamaOay’s words and sadly the President was right. The mission was not going to be easy, certainly nothing like a press dinner, or fundraiser where the audience slathered the President with haughty praise for his corny one-liners and pontification ad nauseam. No, this was not going to be as easy as those silly speaking engagements where he could stand around all night bloviating in an attempt to come across as smart, cultured, educated, and of similar stock. No, this was not going to be one of those self-indulgent, frivolous debaucheries...this was going to be something else, a crusade!

  “Look here barbarian, ages ago our hegemony slowly corkscrewed its way into the world from which you and I have come. A world where people of our ilk dominated institutions like education, the arts, the media, and the welfare offices. A world where we were all working toward one colossal panacea using the ruse of making everything ‘fair and nice’...and we were so close to succeeding!

  All my living life I fought to make our corkscrew bigger and I did it like so many of us on ‘the left,’ by calling conservatives everything in the book and threatening to bring the riots to their homes. We were winning by screaming all the time, by using every four-letter word we could dream up, and by using flabbergasting innuendoes with logical sounding, illogical conclusions and the total upheaval of the country we sought nearly came to pass. But, now all of that wonderfulness has started falling apart to shit. First, we lose the House, then the Senate, soon we could even lose the White House. As we liberals fought to create millions-upon-millions of uneducated, non-thinking, dependent rubes, so too must you carry the battle on here in this dimension.”

  “With you at my side?”

  Saul looked as if he did not understand.

  “Hey, there are no teleprompters to tell me what to say, or think, so what am I do do? Are there going to be cue cards?”

  The wizard smiled, “No my young pupil for I am only a spirit after all and therefore unable to lend any sort of carnal intervention. I will, however, speak to you from time-to-time as if carried on the four winds.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You will be given signs to prod you along your way fool. My words to you will be clear as a bell, so not even you with your now more-primitive brain will be able to misinterpret my meaning.”

  “Oh, that’s good,” replied the President, nodding, “that’s very good.”

  “Barbarian, this world will either become a place dominated by likeminded, liberals like ourselves, or it will be turned into primordial nothingness, do you understand me?”

  “If I do not succeed your going to turn this world into something resembling the third-world banana republic of my birth?”

  “Yes, BamaOay, it will become like Kenya.”

  “I certainly don’t want that to happen. They have no